When you buy root-unfriendly Android devices, you are far more likely to lose root after updates. Stick to the Root-Friendly devices and you'll be safe.

This list only ranks phones based on their permanent rootability: the ability to root a phone and replace the boot and system images, and not by any other standard. A phone may be easily rootable, but might have other flaws that make it a poor device.

Important: phones may change from one category to another when manufacturers and carriers release updates. The phones listed under “Root-Friendly” are likely safe indefinitely, but there is no guarantee that others will be rootable forever. Do your own research before buying and let us know if things change.

The great choice devices have little to no protection right now, allowing them to be rooted easily. Root is generally not supported by the manufacturer, but is not actively discouraged. Great devices generally have fastboot support for unsigned images, or can be rooted from Android with little likelihood that a future system update will remove this ability.

A phone that can always been downgraded to an earlier, rootable version is considered a great choice as well.

This is a special sub-category for cross-flashable phones, ie: phones that don't run Android natively and can be easily flashed to become a working Android device. Installing Android on these devices may require advanced knowledge of Linux, Android or other operating systems.

The good choice devices have security, but the security is either weak or has been broken in all versions. Alternatively, they may have writable boot/system partitions, but no fastboot (requiring a temporary root to write that may be fixable in a future system update). There's no guarantee that future versions of the device will be rootable, but as of the most recent update they are rootable. Check with forums to confirm before you purchase a phone on this list!

Any phone that relies on a software root in Linux to flash images and may receive system updates will be in this list, since a future update may make this difficult.

Poor choices have protections that have not been broken yet (or has newer releases that cannot be rooted), have signed boot partitions that cannot be replaced, or read-only system partitions that cannot be written to at this time. Root might be possible, but it is difficult to support custom ROMs.